The Fowler Museum at UCLA will honor its 50th anniversary with special exhibitions starting this fall, and a former CSU Monterey Bay professor is part of the celebration.

Fowler at Fifty will include eight exhibitions that will be installed in two large galleries; all spotlight strengths in the Fowler’s collections of art from Africa, the Pacific and the Americas and highlight works shown for the first time.

Amalia Mesa-Bains, former chair of the Visual and Public Art Department and professor emeritus, will work with the Fowler collections to create "New World Wunderkammer," which will include three Cabinets of Curiosity focused on the Americas, Africa, and the Colonial works of the New World.

In several installations over two decades, Dr. Mesa-Bains has worked to intervene in and disrupt the earlier European foundations of collecting.

The New World Wunderkammer will be the first time she has been able to use a major collection to recontextualize objects within themes of memory, struggle, loss and wonder, according to her blog.

Within each cabinet, guardian figures will anchor the narratives of critical artifacts. Each cabinet will also contain a blessing space with significant spiritual objects.

The larger Wunderkammer will engage the viewer in a setting much like a laboratory with archeological specimens and natural phenomenon. Dr. Mesa-Bains will weave through the installation fragments of her own mementos from previous art works.

The room will be completed by eight new prints based on key pieces from the collection. The artifacts will be layered in the prints with botanical, cartographic and historical photographic references.

This theater of wonder animates the cultural landscape and human geography of the New World through objects of beauty and power.

The exhibits open Oct. 13 and will remain on display until Jan. 26. Dr. Mesa-Bains will give an artist’s talk at 2 p.m. on opening day.

Read a story in the Los Angeles Times about the exhibit.

In addition, Dr. Mesa-Bains also has a featured article in the inaugural edition of Museum and Curatorial Studies Review, a peer-reviewed journal that published its first issue this summer.

Her essay, The Latino Cabinet of Curiosities: A Postcolonial Reopening, re-examines the roles of artists who make use of curatorial strategies within community and museum settings. More faculty news